AJ Dunn Reads

  The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee Jo Kuan and her guardian are rare in 1890 Atlanta. Chinese in a sea of white southerners and recently freed but servile black ex-slaves, Jo gets by with Old Gin by working as a milliner in a small shop. Old Gin works as a horse trainer and carer for the Payne family, where Jo once worked as well until she was let go. When she is fired from the shop she finds herself rehired by Mrs. Payne to be a maid to her haughty and mean daughter, Caroline. Jo does her duty, but finds a way to ease her struggles with Caroline when it is revealed that the young miss is clandestinely meeting with a young man who is off the market. Jo and Old Gin squat in the barn basement attached to the house of the Bells who run a local newspaper, which is in danger of closing and in need of new subscriptions. Jo overhears the family's conversations. It is the beginning of Jim Crow and the women's suffrage movement in Atlanta and Jo has opinions which she secretly shares i...